Five Reasons for Seven Shores

There is a new Seven Shores Urban Market very close to the original Seven Shores on Regina Street, Waterloo. In fact, the new location at 10 Regina Street North is basically right next door at the former GenX  Video store. Regardless of where it is, owner and operator Sean Zister describes what Seven Shores is.

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What is Seven Shores Urban Market?

To put it very simply, Seven Shores Urban Market sells products from local and international producers who have been paid fair prices. These products include fresh food, baked goods, preserves, coffee, tea, and art and even fashion. The goods come from 30 or more small, independent farms and businesses. Our Cafe provides healthy lifestyle choices and a healthy menu that includes a range of soups, salads, sandwiches, spring rolls, smoothies and organic fairly traded coffee. You can eat-in or take-out; however, it’s done we’re all about promoting the slow food movement and serving fresh food that is local and organic.

Local honeycrisp apples.

Seven Shores Principles
Seven Shores is about educating our customers about resiliency: taking action to get people engaged in inspirational conversation about improving the livelihood of our community not just locally but globally as well. We see ourselves as Creating Powerful Change.  This is explained in our five principles:

Top-notch café experience
We provide friendly customer service and create a relaxing atmosphere where customers can enjoy their meal and conversation.  We provide articles and maps to try to start dialogue on world and local issues. We write monthly newsletters to inform people about environmental issues, events in the community, and inspired ways of living.  Our human-powered bike blender (which makes fantastic smoothies on the patio in the summer) exemplifies ways of using alternative energy sources. We’re excited about that.

Ethical business practices
When we purchase our products, we provide fair prices to the local and international suppliers.  We also provide a living wage to all our employees; this allows communities to have greater economic self sufficiency and reduce reliance on social programs while improving health and quality of life.

Helping to make healthy lifestyle choices easy
Our fresh, local, organic café and catering menu showcases ways to reduce food miles by eating products available during the harvest season.  We host seminars on healthy living and practices. We also provide organized weekly nutritious food boxes for pick up or delivery. By providing these healthy lifestyle choices, we create opportunities for our community to increase its health and knowledge of local food systems and local farming.

A local farmer holds a few examples of his black radish harvest.

Creating opportunities to make positive global impact
We make fair trade and organic purchases of coffee, tea, produce, and gift-ware to provide sustainable livings in communities.  We implement eco-conscious practices such as zero waste (compost, recycling, biodegradable cups and take-out, re-useable catering trays). We purchase from Waterloo Region growers and businesses reducing food miles and CO2 emissions as much as possible. A high portion of our produce is bought organically which increases personal, environmental, employee and farmer health. We’re proud of that.

Building a strong community locally and globally
We also proudly focus on Waterloo Region-produced products and conscious consumer opportunities. We are committed to protection of local employment and farm land, stimulating the economy, and building an overall improvement of Quality of Life for all customers and staff.

The new Seven Shores is now open.